19 September 2009

Electronic resurrection!

Last week, I drowned (completely immersed) a Canon A480 still-cam (which of course also takes minor videos) in Fortescue Falls while trying to take a video clip of same.

Since the water is very close to pure there, I hauled out the batteries, the SD card, then flicked it as dry as I could. Carried it open-handed back to Forrestfield, then rested it on a shelf, panel-door open, for 2 days.

Tried it. The electronics seemed to work fine but the optics were not. Massively over-bright & fuzzy.

Frowned, hauled the batteries out while it was still powered on, leaving the lens extended. Left it to dry for a few more days. Jammed it into a case which went into a coach to Albany with me.

A few days ago, without much hope, I switched it on again. Joy! It perks worfectly! (-:

So... I used it for dazzling some Yankee friends with a morning video clip of Little Beach, using a real camera stand (-: eleven minutes of peaceful bliss, set to gentle wave noises! :-) & with some stills from around the Kalgan/Lower-King area. Nice soil, nice scenery there.

Feeding a 1.2GB AVI clip from the camera through ffmpeg turned it into a 19MB MP4 file (also understood by many web publishing toolsets) with no evident loss of quality. That’s quite a change! In theory, I can fit a little under 40 minutes onto the SD card in the camera.

Penguinista Archive

Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

Who is Leon?

John Tukey

Better to havean approximate answerto the right questionthan a precise answerto the wrong question.

Bernard Shaw

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world;the unreasonable one persists in tryingto adapt the world to himself.Therefore all progress dependson the unreasonable man.

Albert Einstein

It is nothing short of a miraclethat modern methods of instructionhave not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.For this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation,stands mainly in need of freedom.